The best way to do something that you are not sure about doing is to just do it and then afterwards have a good cry if you think you have made a serious fucking mistake. Or hire a good lawyer. I don’t need a lawyer and I haven’t had a good cry … yet. You see, yesterday I deleted fully maxed 450 enchanting with a stack of Vanilla and BC enchants on my main. I’d been deliberating on it for weeks. And once again I found myself deliberating when I just thought, fuck it. And I pressed the delete button and it said, ‘what the fuck? Are you sure??’, and I said yes and then it was all over.

Whoah.

I’ve had enchanting on my main since the beginning. I suppose apart from my hearthstone that this profession was the last original thing remaining. And I just blew it off like Suzzie McTavish used to do for us at year 10 parties. Oh well. And what have I dumped it for? Engineering. Which was not funny when a guidie jumped in chat literally 5 minutes after I performed the dumping and informed us that he had dumped engineering because it was useless. Aww fuck, don’t say things like that.

I haven’t taken engineering yet, I took mining. I want to gather up the resources to power level it in one day, and there is a serious lack of raw mining mats on the AH. No saronite or cobalt ore yesterday. And common wrath gems going for stupidly high prices. So I’m running around Westfall and Duskwood doing some gathering. And you know what? It’s nice, I’m enjoying it. I like grabbing a new profession like mining and taking it up. You get to run around and see all the old content again. Say hello to old friends, and then kill them if they get in the way of your mining nodes. What the hell is it with aggro radius and nodes? I can walk right through any of these level 15 mobs without them even glancing in my direction, but as soon as I hit a node they come running to attack me from miles away. Hello? If you wanted the node why didn’t you just take it yourself? Now I have to fan of knives you all to the deaths.

I reinstalled gatherer and it still had all my old data! Sweet! So a mining we will go. We jumped into ICC last night for the first run with the new guild, and I got a nice chest drop for a measley 1700gold which is a huge upgrade over my old piece of twaddle. There were a few drops that nobody wanted though and before I knew it the raid leader had given them to me to disenchant.

Lockpicking takes a long time and a lot of effort to level to 400 for scant reward. Oh sure you have the benefit of opening some doors, (though in the whole of WotLC they put in only one – The Violet Hold), and you can open your lockboxes that you find but it’s more a pain-in-the-butt than a help. A pain in the sense that when you get the dreaded whisper of;

“Hi, can u open sme boxe 4 me?”

You just know that this is going to waste your time. I remember one of the first times that someone whispered me like this. I felt thrilled that I would be asked by another player to help them! What a sad, misguided young rogue I was. The trade window opened and I proudly pressed the unlock button. Then it opened again. And again. I think I opened 18 boxes for the prick, all in total silence without a word whispered. Until then end of course when I got a, “thx”, and that was it. Not even a lousy copper piece.

And the fact of getting a rogue to open valuable items for you doesn’t make a lot of sense. If anything, we should be trying to steal those items from you. Wouldn’t it be great if a rogue could pick the pockets of players? Particularly of the other faction? That would change the environment around Dalaran, I can tell you.

I never charge for opening boxes because I never know what to charge. What level is the box? What level is the player? What would be fair in each unique situation? I just don’t know. So you wait to see if you get a tip. You can wait a long time, I can tell you. Just make it a secondary profession and give everyone the chance to level it up. Except paladins of course. Those goody-two-shoes should be made to have to suck up to everyone. Can you open this for me? Please? Pleeeeease? Oh, and priests. And druids of course, those pesky nature lovers. Would be silly to give it to shamans as well, just thinking about it …

My Arena partner and I are both jewelcrafters, and last night in between bouts of slicing opponents into little pieces, we spoke about the overall level of fail of trying to sell epic gems on our server. To put it bluntly, you can’t. Well, not to make a decent profit anyway. Rare gems I can sell, even green quality gems, but not epics. I’d be lucky to sell one a week on the Auction House. The only way you can make any money off them is by cutting other players own raw gems, but that entails hanging around on street corners rentboy style.

The reason that players are not want to spend 190 gold or so on an epic gem has been given to the both of us on repeated occasions by the players themselves. When told the price of a gem and a cut together they reply with a depressingly similar phrase:

“No thanks, I’ll just go farm some quick honor and get my gem that way.”

Honor, particularly with the PvP changes in the last patch, flows in at a very quick rate. It is not hard to farm 15,000 honor in an hour if you win a few battlegrounds. The first random battleground you win in a day will give you around 5500 honor. How much does a raw epic gem cost you? 10,000 honor. If you look at how many badges of whatever an epic gem costs you it is clear that farming them for honor is much, much faster. So fast in fact that you would be a fool not to. I thought that there were more fools out there, but not apparently in this case.

I don’t know if this is an oversight by Blizzard. Perhaps it is relevant only to my weird server. It could be that on other servers people can’t be bothered to run a couple of battlegrounds for an epic gem. You see the effect that this has when you compare selling epics to meta gems. Meta gems sell fairly well, and they only go into one slot. Each player only needs one meta, but they still sell. It’s a sad day when you can’t rip your players off and they can sort themselves out. What is the world coming to?

I have only been able to find a single blacksmith on Magtheridon so far. Thankfully I don’t often need a titanium weapon chain, because he happens to be socially inept. Yesterday he whispered me asking for me to disenchant some items for him. I happened to be in Dalaran at the time, so I said that I would for a fee. I received a smily face as a reply and then was invited to group with him, which I assumed meant an acceptance of my conditions of service. He gave me the items and I disenchanted them. This is not as simple as it seems. I already have a lot of disenchanting mats in my bags, so when I disenchant gear for other people they all get mixed up together, so afterwards I have to scroll back through the chat, (which can be difficult in Dalaran what with all the goldsellers, shouting and general hoo-ha), count up how many of each item was DE’ed, then make new stacks of each item and finally put them up in a trade window. It takes some time, not as easy as just clicking a button. So anyway, I put them up in the trade window and he immediately presses trade.

But I don’t. I just wait. For my fee. It’s a small fee, 1g per item disenchanted, but this is my time and I’ll charge for it as I see fit. Eventually he asks what the problem is. I say that there is no problem, it just seems that he has forgotten to put the gold up. He replies that he thought I was joking. I reply that I don’t joke about gold bud, my ex girlfriends tits maybe, but never about gold. He says that he doesn’t have the 6 gold. A level 80 with 450 blacksmiting doesn’t have 6 gold. I reply that I will mail the mats to him C.O.D for 6 gold, so he can collect them when he wants for that price. He suddenly discovers that he has 6 gold, but he grumbles about it.

He then asks me to link my enchanting. Against my better judgement I do so. He tells me which enchant he wants, it requires among other things, 4 greater cosmic essence. He only has 3 on him, the ones I just gave to him. He asks me if I have one. I reply that I do. This is great news for our hero until I mention that the price for the enchant and the essence will be 40g. Now he exclaims in outrage at such a price for a greater cosmic essence. I patiently point out to this retard that this includes my price for doing the enchant, and seeing as the mat costs 27g on the auction house, I’m letting him off cheap. He declines my kind offer with the news that he’ll just get a guildie to do it for him and leaves the group without another word.

Fine by me, as I was sure that even if I did do the enchant something else would inevitably come up to make it all painful. How right I was. Within 30 seconds he whispered me with:

“Can you borrow me 500 gold please, payz you back soon.”

I replied with a calm, no, and then put him on ignore. So now I have to find another blacksmith if I ever need another titanium weapon chain. Thank god I don’t wear plate. Shortly after this I grouped up with a guildie. She is an alchemist that can do transmutes, so we are going into business together with my jewelcrafting. As we were sorting things out there came up a notice in trade chat of somebody looking for a JC. I didn’t respond. My guildie prompted me to reply, and I informed her that I just couldn’t be bothered. I don’t sell in trade chat anymore. I’d rather masturbate with a cheesegrater. Socializing in a social game on the internet is just too painful for words.

The ganking guild is moving along quite nicely, with several people hitting 80 in the last week or so. With the dickhead factor being low and the general skill factor being high, it’s making for a nice overall playing experience. Which is not good for blog posts ranting about the epic failness of the players that you meet in game. You may have noticed the lack of ranting posts. Well, this is the reason. Nobody likes a rantless ranter.

But there is a little situation that I am finding difficult to work my way around. On a realm that is as deserted as Magtharidon, players with maxed professions are few and far between. I happen to be one of those sought after players, as I have both Enchanting and Jewelcrafting maxed out. So when the rare player writes in chat that they are looking for an enchanter/JC, it’s usually me who throws them a whisper. I don’t charge much for my services – usually around 20g for an enchant or cut. And people seem happy to pay it. But when it comes to my guildies I am in a slightly tricky position.

I’m going to come clean right now – in WoW, I am not a goblin. I’m not a social either. I just do my own thing. I always have gold as I don’t spend it much, and the game experience for me is not based around gold. It took me 4 years of play to max enchanting on my main as I just did it as it came. And I’m more than happy to just throw enchants and cuts around for friends and guildies.

But I am in a guild full of goblins, with the GM being the biggest goblin of all, Gevlon. And my guildies have been using my services, which I am happy to provide. A few of them have offered to pay something and I have waved them off. A few of them have paid me something or slipped me extra mats as a form of payment, which I am happy to accept. But I’m not forcing them to. The only time when I will insist on a reasonable payment is when I am sure that the item being made is not for themselves, but is probably going to end up on the Auction House.

This is how I do things. The problem is that I am in a guild which originated from a blog where the way I do things is not encouraged. How does a non-goblin like me survive in an ethos where it is every man for himself? I’m not being taken advantage of because they are utilising my services following my own rules. And Gevlons girlfriend, (who is very nice by the way), has done a few transmutes for me free of charge. All of this would be fine except that Gevlon has stated that he wants people in the guild to learn how to survive on their own two feet, which is one reason why there isn’t a guild bank. So what should I do? Should I just keep doing my own thing or should I rip them off for every gold piece that I can get? I would prefer to just do my own thing, but I hope that I am not undermining the fundamentals on which the guild was built.

I have first aid levelled on my rogue. You need to have first aid levelled if you are a rogue, because you will use it a lot. That’s one of the little drawbacks of being a melee dps class with no ways to heal yourself. I suppose you could take alchemy but I’ve never heard of a rogue with alchemy. T’would be blasphemy!

So I’ve always levelled first aid as a matter of course. And I started doing it on my mage, and I got to heavey woollen bandages and I’ve stopped. Because I just don’t use it. Like, ever. I can make my own food, so I eat my food because at the same time I’m drinking my mana beverage. I wish they had it in Dr Pepper. So I began to wonder about this first aid business, which is mainly due to the fact that my bank tab is rapidly filling up to the brim with lots and lots of cloth. I have stacks of the stuff. I am overflowing in cloth. So I was wondering if I should just level the stupid first aid or use it for something else. Like perhaps levelling tailoring. That wouldn’t be bad, seeing as I’m a mage. So I went and did a little research on the costs of levelling first aid. Apparently you require;

I checked current AH prices as of today, and the rough cost of all of this cloth is 466 gold. Then I checked out how much a stack of heavy frostweave bandages cost. Because if I level first aid it’s due to the fact that I will need it for these babies, if I need it at all. And a stack of these bandages sell for the low, low price of 5 gold per stack. So I would need to buy and consume 93.2 stacks of these bandages to make levelling first aid worth the gold. I can maybe, and I mean maaaaybe see my rogue using this number of bandages, and that would be if I was raiding with a bunch of morons. But my mage? Nah, I don’t think so.

So I’m keeping my stacks of cloth. Either I’ll dump them on the AH or I’ll level tailoring if and when I decided to take it. And if they do to first aid what they have done to fishing, then this will be a no brainer.

To start off with, this is the first of what will be a regular Friday post. I am also going to attempt to set down another day for definite posting pleasure, which day that will be remains to be seen. Slackness has no bounds.

Except when you’re attempting to scrounge together 5000 smackers for your epic mount. I achieved this feat a few weeks ago without talking to any nasty gold sellers. Off topic a bit, but when you get whispered in-game by one of these low-lives, do you automatically report them as a spammer? I do, but I’m wondering if this actually achieves anything. I would like to imagine that this action on my part results in their computer spontaneously combusting before their very eyes, but I’m doubting its veracity.

Anyway, 5000 gold. It’s a lot. The thought of getting 5000 gold when I rejoined WoW after my little hiatus seemed formidable. And it’s not only 5000. There’s also the 1000 for cold weather flying. My previous gold making attempts had been miserable. So I was pleasantly surprised at how the gold stacked up when I began questing in Northrend. And questing is the key. Apart from the gold you get for handing quests in, the big money earner is from the green and blue items from the quest rewards. My two professions are Enchanting and Mining. Enchanting was hovering around 360 when I blew into Northrend, with Mining being maxed out. Enchanting is a great profession for a rogue. You get to enchant all your own gear, obviously, but you also benefit from the awesome ring enchants. And you also get to disenchant stuff. After a few quests I had a stack of infinite dust and some cosmic essence. I popped into Stormwind to check out what they fetched on the Auction House.

They fetched a lot.

A stack of Infinite Dust was going for between 100-120 gold. Cosmic Essences had similar jaw-dropping prices. Suddenly I knew where the bulk of my epic mount moulah was going to come from. Leveling my enchanting was going to have to wait. Mining brought in a fair bit of gold as well. Not huge amounts, but enough to plod along. Cobalt bars were selling for around 34g a stack, while a stack of saronite ore fetched around 25g. There were a few other items that helped my path towards the magic 6000 number.

Raw meat. Be it chilled meat, worg bits, mammoth steaks, or whatever, I could get on average around 35g for a stack of this stuff. I just killed everything I saw and then stuck it on the Auction House.

Mithril, Truesilver and Thorium Bars. At the time I wasn’t aware of the Death Knight profession situation, but I did notice that these were going for obscene prices on the Auction House.

The other thing I did was to change my Auction House strategy a little. Namely, I put everything on the AH on Friday night for a 48 hour period. This resulted in a big sell rate. Sometimes I would do this, go away for the weekend and then drop online on Sunday evening to some staggering amounts of gold waiting for me. It would be fair to say that I got my epic mount in this way in about three weeks of casual playing and leveling.

And epic mounts are sensational.

But now that I’ve got my epic mount and I’m slowly leveling my enchanting, (395 at this point in time), I’m beginning to wonder if mining is superfluous to my needs. As I’m doing a fair number of dailies, gold just isn’t much of a problem. And mining doesn’t do anything for me as a rogue. The 500hp buff is the ultimate in meh for us backstabbers. So I’m thinking of dropping mining for something else, and I’ve narrowed it down to two choices; Jewelcrafting or Engineering.

The clincher is that I can use Mining to level either one of them. So I can run around and gather all the mats needed before I start, then drop Mining and power level whichever one I choose. At this point I am leaning towards Jewelcrafting, but I’m going to do a little bit more research into it before i decide.

On a raiding note, last Tuesday we cleared three quarters of Naxx normal and I got the T7 chest drop. Add that to Lillehoff’s Winged Blades badge thrown weapon and my gear is starting to look semi-reasonable. Then on Wednesday a bunch of our guildies joined a 25 man Sarth run. This was my first time ever in this raid, so I really didn’t have much idea what was going on. Luckily my fellow guildies Thoff and Vel were coaching me on ventrillo, so I was okay for the most part. Although I did have a major panic moment when we hit the first fight and I went to use adrenalin rush and discovered that it wasn’t on my action bar anymore. WTF?? Oh, new patch. And they gave us back our talents once again. Cue Elizà spending the first fight tucked away in a corner clicking slowly on talent points. Sheesh.

When we got to the big boss himself, I did have a few problems. Namely that I couldn’t see the lava walls. I purchased a new graphics card on Wednesday, (Yey! No more 7fps in Naxx), but I hadn’t had time to reconfigure my graphic settings. So I basically just stood between the dragons legs and hit him as hard as I could while a fellow guildie, (thanks Stu), spam healed me whenever the lava walls came in. Which resulted in this awesome dps, which isn’t bad for a first ever run, even if I was a heal sucker. That’s me, Elizà, third on the damage chart. Yey.

Mind you the damage bill was a bit out there. Luckily I still have enchanting.